Husband Tested Recipes

A little something from the olden days. Husbands, run don’t walk to get this wonderful cookbook for the Missus. I love these vintage cooking books. Definitely a keeper for an archive, but not so much for a public library.

The recipes don’t look too bad if you ignore the icky black and white photos. I am going to say no to the funky looking banana nut salad.

I’m more worried about the “Bottled Salad Dressing” in the same recipe. In 1949, was there only one kind? And what about those “important food substances in whole milk”—does that mean whole human milk or whole cow’s milk?

Well, at least the same woman could both cook for her husband and care for a baby. I’ve seen cookbooks from earlier generations that seemed to imply you could either cook or raise children but not both.

Are those sausages laid out in a starburst pattern on a plate of spaghetti?
What sort of pet they are milking?
Why are the recipes set out is a spreadsheet arrangement?
How can banana be a salad?
What’s happened to that baby’s hair?

A lot of food companies had little promotional brochures/cookbooks like this. The Pet Milk people very likely offered this booklet over the radio (on the shows mentioned, which they sponsored [thus the catchy band name!]; back then TV was rare in much of the country and everyone listened to radio). The person requesting the booklet might not even have had to pay, since it was a promotional item; she — presumably a housewife — maybe sent in some labels as proof of purchase with the request for the cookbook. But yeah, food in the Olden Days was often weird by our standards.

This Pet Milk sounds just a bit creepy. It even says to ask your doctor about it. Oh no! That’s one thing that hasn’t changed and is worse than ever, only there’s no long list of scary side effects. So what could they be? Kidney failure? Tuberculosis? Severe diaper rash??